Anthony Novak, an amateur comedian from Parma, a suburb of Cleveland, was arrested and briefly jailed after creating a fake social media page in 2016 inspired by the Parma Police Department’s Facebook page. His lawyers argue it was an obvious travesty and he was acquitted at trial.
Novak then filed a civil suit alleging his constitutional rights had been violated, though it was dismissed after a federal appeals court granted the officers qualified immunity — a legal doctrine that protects government officials from abuse. lawsuits for alleged violation of civil rights. “There is no recognized right to be free from retaliatory arrest that is supported by probable cause,” the appeals judges ruled.
Now Novak is asking the Supreme Court to take up his case.
True to form, the supporting brief filed Monday by Onion lawyers takes a satirical approach in its attempt to get the nation’s highest court to consider Novak’s motion. It begins with an oddly false claim that the Onion is “the world’s leading news publication”, with a “daily readership of 4.3 trillion” that has “become the most powerful and influential organization in the history of mankind”.
Despite the sarcasm and hyperbole, the legal record is no joke. The purpose of the publication is to have the Supreme Court consider qualified immunity and free speech rights. (Amic briefs are documents filed by parties not directly involved in a case to provide the court with additional information.)
“The Onion cannot stand idly by in the face of a decision that threatens to gut a form of rhetoric that has existed for millennia, which is particularly powerful in the realm of political debate and which, purely incidentally, forms the basis of The Onion’s . writers’ paychecks,” the brief reads.
It also highlights what the Onion suggests are flaws in the legal system when it comes to protecting those who use comedy to interrogate those in positions of authority.
“The Onion regularly puts its finger in the eye of repressive and authoritarian regimes, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, and national presidential administrations,” the memoir states. “So the professional parodists at The Onion were less than thrilled to be faced with a court ruling that doesn’t hold government actors accountable for jailing and prosecuting a would-be comedian simply for poking fun at ‘them.”
According to Novak’s attorneys, police obtained a warrant for his arrest on a fake Facebook page that mocked the department. The page in question was only opened about 12 hours before Novak took it down after law enforcement threatened to open a criminal investigation. They searched his apartment, seized his electronics and charged him with a felony under an Ohio law that criminalizes using a computer to “disrupt” police operations.
Novak’s motion asks the Supreme Court to decide whether officials can claim qualified immunity when they arrest someone on the basis of parole alone. It also asks judges to completely suppress the doctrine.
A lawyer representing Parma, Richard Rezie, said in an email on Tuesday that Novak’s lawsuit was “without merit” and that the courts that dismissed it “did not base their opinions on parody, free speech or the need for a disclaimer”.
Novak ‘went beyond mimicry’ when he copied a warning posted by the city of Parma about his page on the fake page, claiming it was the ‘official’ version, Rezie said . “Falsely copying an official disclaimer accompanied by a claim to be the genuine Facebook page is not a travesty.”
The Onion did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its legal filing. Andrew Wimer, spokesman for the Institute for Justice, the civil law nonprofit that represents Novak, described the memoir as “both humorous and very serious.”
“If the police can use their authority to arrest their critics without consequence, everyone’s rights are at risk,” the institute said in a statement.
